By interleaving data sectors around a track it is possible average out sector-to-sector signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) variation, such that bad SNR (e.g. due to a media defect) can be spread around into multiple data sectors. This lessens the impact on each individual sector and improves overall SNR variation tolerance for a data storage device, such as a hard disk drive (HDD). However, input and output timings can vary when memory slices are de-interleaved to reconstruct the data sectors. When a despreader outputs the de-interleaved data sectors through a buffer (e.g. Y-buffer) in sequence for decoding, the buffer may overflow if the despreader outputs the de-interleaved data sectors too quickly, or decoder performance may be degraded as data sectors are forced through an abbreviated decoding cycle in order to prevent buffer overflow.